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Men's b-ball gets a scare

SYDNEY, Australia-- On those rare occasions when a U.S. team stocked with NBA stars gets in a tight game, the same refrain is heard throughout the arena.

''They'll turn it on and win by 20.''

That was true every time -- until Thursday (Wednesday night EDT).

Lithuania, the team known for tie-dyed warmup shirts and consecutive bronze medals, was within five points of the United States with just under a minute to play and had a chance to cut the lead to three.

The final score was 85-76, but the big news was that a team had been within striking distance of a U.S. team as the clock wound down.

''You have to play the perfect game and you have the perfect game plan and you have to get lucky,'' Lithuania assistant coach Donn Nelson said. ''I think the feeling was that the stars were lined up and if it was ever going to happen it was going to be tonight.''

Nelson, who is an assistant coach to his father with the Dallas Mavericks, was the man who designed the game plan Lithuania used.

It wasn't anything extremely complicated. It wasn't anything a lot of other coaches have written on a blackboard a couple of hours before tipoff. It was just that this was the game plan that was good enough to enable Lithuania -- a team that no one gave a chance -- to keep it close for 39 minutes.

''Our game plan was to take away easy baskets, hang in there, stay in the game, get ourselves in position toward the end. Don't wake sleeping dogs. Don't get into it with anybody,'' he said. ''I think the game plan worked pretty well, we just couldn't close it.''

The easy baskets weren't there for the U.S. team as it shot 35.7 percent, well off the 59.8 percent it shot in the opening victories over China and Italy.

Lithuania certainly hung around, becoming the first team to ever hold a second-half lead over a U.S. team since the NBA players started playing in 1992.